On 27/02/07, James Cridland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 2/27/07, vijay chopra <[EMAIL PROTECTED]<https://mail.google.com/mail?view=cm&tf=0&[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: > > > Take a site like slashdot, I visit, I like the content, so I decide to > white-list. However I find the ads over intrusive so I put it back on the > black list > Ah. Other people might get irritated with the ads and therefore not go back to Slashdot. Instead, you want to get the content, but not want to let them have any chance of earning revenue from it. It's akin to stealing chocolate from the store because you believe the prices are 'over-high'. It's unethical. It's indefensible. It's wrong. You know it - I know it - we all know it. Your only ethical option is to Not Visit. Full-stop. Stop stealing, and stop boasting that you're stealing.
My first instinct was to write something very unBBC here (think hallucinogenic drugs), but that would be an abuse of the list, so I wont. Instead I'll defend myself rationally. Slashdot has put content on a public network, it serves me what I request, there is no obligation on me to request it all. To use your metaphor, the shop store might be offering it's broken chocolate free (there's a shop near me does this), I don't have to take it. Secondly I contribute back to slashdot because I meta-moderate, moderate and submit stories regularly, I also partake in the public beta of "discussion 2 and "drink" from the fire hose; what I spend in time doing that out ways any benefits they get by my downloading and ignoring ads Interestingly, we did some experiments on Virgin Radio's website with flash
overlayz (you know, those horrid things that get in the way of content). I said to the sales manager: "We'll do those, fine. The first complaint we get, we'll remove them from the site". She agreed. I believed that we'd get the first complaint within the first hour of the first day. We're still waiting for that first complaint, nine months later. The moral of the story? Complain, people. Please. If you don't complain, I can't tell the sales manager to take her crappy overlayz and shove them where the sun doesn't shine because our visitors don't want them.
I've never visited Virgin Radio's site (I don't listen to Virgin Radio) but if I did and saw flash overlays in my way I'd either leave and not come back, or (if there's content I like) remove them with my ad blocker; why should I help some random company make money from their site if they don't have basic skills for good web design. The only time I complain is if companies put the W3C compliant logo on their page and it doesn't validate as that's false advertising, If there's only a couple of mistakes I'll even send a fix. However, I should rush to point out - we no longer carry overlayz, because
we believe nobody likes them. If only someone had complained, we'd have acted earlier. (Please give feedback about anything you see on that site to www.virginradio.co.uk/contact_us/?to=techies and I or one of my team will reply).
Again it's not the public's responsibility to fix your site design to make it profitable; that's you and your line managers job (put a focus group together or something), however as you've asked, if I open my sidebar, instead of resizing the page, I get a scroll bar; this is highly annoying and next to the main picture box (the one that changes with the rollovers) I have a second black box that seems to do nothing at all (yes I turned my adblocker off). Also in Opera (previous comment's were about firefox) your rollovers don't work, though the black box disappears (I haven't checked it in IE). I'll send you that through your feedback form for you as well. Vijay.
